Salvation history

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), May 8, 2011 at 11:26

Ted wrote

>Can an expert in Islamic history answer how the deeds of Muhammad in the battle of Khaibar can support his credentials as a religious leader. Most religions that I know about, do not approve of deceit, breaking of promise, politial negotiations, and wars as particularly religious things. To me it appears that Muhammad not only involved in all these things in this war but also he acquired a Jewish girl (17 years old) as a wife for himself in this war. Apparently, she was given the choice to either become a slave or convert to Islam and become a wife. She chose the latter.

I hate to disappoint you but I happen to believe that John Wansbrough was very correct that we cannot reconstruct the life of Muhammad by reading the Qur'an only and as you know the Hadith is really anachronistic and it only reflects the aspiration of the emerging Muslim community in the 3rd century of Islam and Ignaz Goldziher was able to detach it from the so called historical Muhammad

As for Muhammad's biography or sirat rasul allah or al-sira al-nabawiyya or 3ilm al-maghazi there is nothing historical about them and they are no more than,, as was proven by Wansbrough, Salvation history or to be blunt pious fiction and as was proven by Henri Lammens that the sira as well as the hadith are no more than qissas (stories) that were all made up to explain the Quranic logias and pericopes that did not make any sense to the Ulama in the 3rd century and they still do not make any sense now

Oh and the so called genre of al-tarikh (read this as islamic history) was found to be late, tendentious and no more than qissas as well as topoi and schemata that mean nothing and lead us no where

What is most amazing is that even his name Muhammad is problematic as we are told in the sira that his name was really Qutham and his kunya was Abul Qasim but the Qur'an on only 4 occasions talks about a Muhammad and one time about an Ahmad and the sira tell us that he was munahimana which is a Syriac word and it means he who did rise (from the dead which is supposed to be Jesus) and we are told in al-Masjed al-Aqsa inscriptions that Muhammad(an) abd Allah which is Arabized Syriac for the blessed the servant of Allah which is supposed to be Jesus in the old Christian Syrian/Arabian theology and what is even more intersting is that the islamic historical tradition tells us that his name really means the blessed but the presence of what Arabic language grammarians call masdar memi in his name as in the first meem in Muhammad which is a rare grammaticacl construction in the Arabic language makes it clear that the word Muhammad is not even an Arabic word but Syriac and Hebrew where the meaning of the word would be the blessed as the word the blessed in Arabic means Mahmoud and not Muhammad!

I hate to disappoint you but it is the truth

>A lot is written about this war and to justify Muhammad's action but even at its best it was a war between a business community and a religious army. They each followed a different sets of standards and methods with one side doing what businessman usually do and the other compromising every good principle of religion while hiding under the religious umbrella. The example that Muhammad set is gong on even today. In Islam, every war is a religious war, politics, religion and economy are deeply intertwined, ethical standards are easily compromisable for sectarian gains, and the true goal of each war is material gain. Batya dagan very correctly refers to the battle of Khaibar and quotes from Mushsharraf's speech to illustrate how Islamic politics works.

Good point however if your question is did Muhammad exist then the answer is I happen to believe that there really was no historical muhammad and more likely than not there was no Khybar either and if he existed then we do not have the evidence that he did exist unless we find some cave in Saudi Arabia with a trove of extant documents

But we are still left with a legacy of an Arabian warlord and caravan raider and therefore criminal behavior by Islamist to justiry his so called legacy

I hope i helped

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